How to Raise Your Personal Productivity Through Planning

Is this similar to your normal day? You get to work knowing that you’ve got a number of things that you have to achieve during that day. On the way to your office you stop off and grab a cup of coffee to get you going. What you are doing this, you meet the sales manager also getting a cup of coffee. He engages you in a long conversation about the new product that is about to be launched next week. You escape from him and start walking towards your office. On the way you meet a department head who asks you if you can recall the name and contact details of a consultant to the business used three years ago. You search your memory and can’t remember the name of a person but you remember the event. You have to wait whilst the department head gives you the reasons why they are seeking to re-employ that particular consultant.

You field several other questions from the department head and then get to your office. It has been an hour and a half since you walked in the building. When you get there your assistant is urgently waving three message slips to you. It seems that your boss wants to see you urgently and has already made three phone calls. You go and see him. Finally, you reach your desk and it is two hours and fifteen minutes since you arrived in the building. When you get your office there are 23 phone messages that require your urgent attention.

When you have dealt with the phone messages, check your e-mail and answered any questions getting close to lunchtime. You grab a hurried lunch and return to your office. This is your big opportunity to do your major task of the day which is to review your staff performances. Just as you start going through the reviews standards, Graham drops in to ask you what he should do with an absentee problem that is causing staffing problems on one of the production lines. It’s a serious matter so you spend an hour looking at the options and developing strategies to solve the problem.

Does this sound like you? If it is, your problem is that other people are running your day. I have no clear plan for the day you are forever at the mercy of the things that clamor for your attention, especially the loudest. Planning for the day instead of letting it unfold at the whim of other people, is the single most important aspect of your time shortage problem. Just remember, other people will gobble up your time but if you are planned, you have the opportunity to do what you have planned rather than what they want. The remedy is relatively simple.Will will